ħaikus

After the last post named after a song by the Sex Pistols, I really need to talk about ナナ - Nana, one of the most dramatic anime I’ve ever seen. When ilGrisa first mentioned it, I thought it just had a nice plot, but I never expected to empathize so much with one of the main characters (小松奈々 - Komatsu Nana, aka ハチ - Hachi). Two girls, both 20 years old, both ナナ - Nana, meet on the train to 東京 - Tōkyō, but despite those and many other coincidences, they’re really different. 大崎 ナナ - Ōsaki Nana is a punk rock singer who is trying her best to be successful with her band, BLAST, while Hachi is moving to Tōkyō for love of her boyfriend 遠藤章司 - Endō Shōji. The former looks very mature and knows how to manager her life, the latter is completely unaware of the outside world, she gets continuously fooled and she easily falls in love with all the nice guys she meets. However, life is not that simple, for none of the two. Soon, Hachi has to face the consequences of her frivolous choices and finally grow up; Nana, on the other hand, shows her darkest and most jealous side when she discovers she can’t live without Hachi. The story of my life
Unfortunately only after 47 episodes I realized that only one season was produced and that the story continues on the manga which has not come to an end yet either… I will patiently wait while listening to the very good soundtrack, ilGrisa is missing by only reading the manga.

During this weekend I went to London for the first time ever. I know it sounds quite strange: not many people went, e.g., twice to Bratislava but never to London I actually always wanted to visit the city on the Thames, since I was a child. I don’t even remember how many time I’ve been asking my mother to let me go to London (especially when Ryanair started operating from Brescia) but, eventually, when I first traveled alone I went to Paris. Since then I changed my mind and I always thought that London could have been waiting: it was such a trivial destination that I wanted to visit more exotic places first, as if they could disappear, as if I couldn’t have had the chance to visit them anymore. After visiting St Petersburg last summer I somehow completed the list of the European cities I didn’t want to miss and living in Amsterdam gave me the opportunity to explore a bit more of western Europe: visiting London was a natural consequence.
I had my flight on Friday night to Stansted (read: on the other side of the known universe) but thanks to the time difference the airplane landed before it took off Anyway, I managed to get to the city quite fast although the Stansted Express was more expensive than fast.
On Saturday I walked with James along the Thames from Waterloo station to the Tate Modern gallery, the highlight of my London visit (after Starbucks ok, it’s not funny, I know). The most interesting artwork was Shibboleth:

Doris Salcedo’s installation takes the form of a 167 meter long, meandering crack in the floor of the Turbine Hall, initially a hairline crack and eventually widening to a few inches and around two feet deep. The crack was made by opening up the floor and then inserting a cast from a Colombian rock face. A Tate spokesperson said

She’s not specifying how it’s been done. What she wants is for people to think about what’s real and what’s not.

Salcedo said of the work

It represents borders, the experience of immigrants, the experience of segregation, the experience of racial hatred. It is the experience of a Third World person coming into the heart of Europe. For example, the space which illegal immigrants occupy is a negative space. And so this piece is a negative space.

It really is one of the best modern art installations I’ve ever seen: it was, together with the Gherkin, one of the most beautiful buildings in the world, worth the whole trip to London. Unfortunately it will be at Tate Modern only until April, 8.
Later, we walked on the Millennium Bridge to St Paul’s Cathedral and then to Trafalgar Square which is apparently not James’ favorite London spot… We strolled around even further watching all the interesting shops we found on the way to King’s Arms, a famous bear bar in SOHO. I can’t repeat myself enough: thanks to the smoking ban, places like that are even more attractive! I loved the medieval carpet At King’s Arms I also met Mark with whom I went to Westminster and later to King’s Cross and St Pancras railway stations: the Big Bang Ben is really impressive.
In the night I met James again: we had a delicious dinner and we watched the movie 28 Days Later and a bit of TV, like this wonderful commercial:

Btw, James once asked whether I grew up in Germany or Netherlands because my accent was in some way very Germanic Apparently it depends on which word I’m trying to pronounce: sometimes I sound German, sometimes Italian.

I had a couple of very bad days lately especially because of some friendship issues: I always knew I’m kinda cynical (not as much as ilGrisa, though) and misanthrope, but I’m really wondering whether I’m still that lieber Kerl I used to be… Or whether I’ve actually ever been one. I should really have some Nietzsche always with me, it might help. From Die fröhliche Wissenschaft:

Dieses Leben, wie du es jetzt lebst und gelebt hast, wirst du noch einmal und noch unzählige Male leben müssen; und es wird nichts Neues daran sein, sondern jeder Schmerz und jede Lust und jeder Gedanke und Seufzer und alles unsäglich Kleine und Grosse deines Lebens muss dir wiederkommen, und Alles in der selben Reihe und Folge – und ebenso diese Spinne und dieses Mondlicht zwischen den Bäumen, und ebenso dieser Augenblick und ich selber. Die ewige Sanduhr des Daseins wird immer wieder umgedreht – und du mit ihr, Stäubchen vom Staube!

This morning I also spoke to my boss: I told him I’m going to leave the company and Amsterdam soon to go back to Berlin for a new adventure. Back to the roots, I’m going to start all over.

Honestly, sometimes I think that my life without blogging would be much more relaxed. Yesterday for instance I was simply looking forward to eat my mozzarella and watch some episodes of Nana (just 3 left!): I just didn’t feel the stress of sharing my experiences about the past few crazy days. But then I thought about all my readers, how happy they make me by reading and sometimes commenting my posts and suddenly blogging made more sense: a way to thank them for the attention they give me. Mental masturbations…

Last Sunday, after a good lunch, I went shopping again for a short time with Elisa and she finally found her new boots. Unfortunately, far too soon we had to leave the town to catch the train to the airport: I really had a great time with her! On Monday… well… my life changed again, but I don’t wanna talk about it yet. Not here, not now…

On Tuesday the day at work was quite standard but in the evening I went to Utrecht (which I’m probably intended to visit only by night) for the Kula Shaker concert. The location was really nice, because I could go upstairs, escape the crowd and the smoke; it was just ridiculously small. The supporters, a Dutch band called Ponoka, weren’t too bad but after 45′ I couldn’t stand them any longer The drummer looked quite interesting, though… At the very beginning I thought my English was very bad because I couldn’t understand a word the singer said to the audience, later I realized he was talking Dutch Kula Shaker performed almost flawless a lot of different songs: some of my favorites like Mystical Machine Gun, some rock tracks like 303 and some psychedelic like Hurricane Season which was the best of the whole concert. I was back home quite late and I went to bed at 3 o’clock; no wonder I was really sleepy at work yesterday

Friday evening I went to Schiphol to pick up Elisa who is visiting me until this evening. She landed at 11pm and at 4am we were still awake and chatting about everything. Yesterday we had a long day of shopping in the center of Amsterdam: we mainly visited the 9 straatjes, the Spui and the red light district. We had a lot of fun because we visited a woman only shop in which I helped her choosing her next best friend It’s incredible the number of different functions, vibrations and rotations it has. Very satisfied (even before trying it out) we went then to a second hand shop and later for a coffee. It was almost evening when we had a tour of the red light district rating the girls behind the windows: I guess Elisa was much more excited by their sex appeal than me… It can’t be helped if I’m not lesbian. On Warmoestraat we spent some money at RoB where we both felt like home Ok, she was a bit shocked by some accessories but, after all, we found everything we wanted. The salesman was also quite cute… After a short visit in a coffee shop (which was surprisingly less smoky than a normal cafe) we ate a delicious dinner in a Dutch restaurant on Spuistraat, the name of which I always forget. My soup was great! After a coffee in Cafe de Jaren we went to her friend’s cousin place, close to Oosterpark, for a birthday party which we left quite fast to walk all the way back home… Wow, I’m so tired but now it’s shopping time again.